[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 106 (Friday, July 31, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9522-S9524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE RUMSFELD COMMISSION REPORT

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I want to talk this morning about something 
called the Rumsfeld Report.
  There has been a lot of discussion about the Rumsfeld Commission 
Report in the news media here in Washington. But around the country I 
have noted there is less coverage of it.
  I want to talk a little bit about it today, because I think that the 
Rumsfeld Commission Report issued to the Congress about 2 weeks ago is 
probably the most important report that this Congress has received and 
that it is one of the most important events of the last 2 years with 
respect to the obligations of the Congress and the administration to 
ensure the national security of the United States. Of course, when all 
is said and done, our first responsibility is to the defense of the 
American people.
  By way of background, in the 1996 defense authorization bill we 
ensured that there was an amendment that required the establishment of 
the National Missile System by the year 2003.
  During the debate on that amendment, however--this was on December 1, 
1995--Senators Carl Levin and Dale Bumpers received a letter from 
Joanne Isham of the CIA's Congressional Relations Office. That letter 
claimed that the language in the DOD bill relating to the threat posed 
by ballistic missiles--I am quoting now--``. . . [overstates] what we 
currently believe to be the future threat'' of missile attack on the 
United States.''
  This is a letter from the CIA directly to Members of the Senate in 
opposition to an amendment that is pending on the floor.
  The letter also said, again quoting, it was ``extremely unlikely'' 
that nations would sell ICBMs and that the United States would be able 
to detect a home-grown ICBM program ``many years in advance,'' again 
quoting the letter.
  The statements in that CIA letter were based entirely on a new 
National Intelligence Estimate--an NIE. The title is ``NIE 95-19.'' It 
was entitled ``Emerging Missile Threat to North America During the Next 
15 Years.'' It was released in its classified form in November 1995.
  But the key judgment of that NIE is, quoting: ``. . .[no] country, 
other than the major declared nuclear powers, will develop or otherwise 
acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that will threaten the 
contiguous 48 States or Canada.''
  President Clinton vetoed H.R. 1530, the defense authorization bill 
for fiscal year 1996, on December 28, 1995, in part because the 
National Missile Defense System called for pursuant to our amendment, 
in his words, addresses ``. . . [a] long-range threat that our 
Intelligence Community does not foresee in the coming decade.''--end of 
quote of the President.
  In reaction, Mr. President, many Members of the Congress rejected the 
conclusions of that NIE as incorrect. Some of us on the Intelligence 
Committee believed that the information that we possessed suggested 
that the conclusions were inaccurate. Our concerns, frankly, centered 
on flawed assumptions underlying the key judgment of the NIE. The 
unclassified assumptions are--there are several. Let me tell you what 
they are:
  First, concentrating on indigenous development of ICBMs adequately 
addresses the foreign missile threat to the United States.
  What that means is, we can focus just on what these countries are 
able to build all by themselves and that that is going to be adequate 
in telling us what the threat posed by these countries will be in the 
future.
  Second, foreign assistance will not enable countries to significantly 
accelerate ICBM development.
  In other words, we are not going to look at what other countries 
might sell or give to these powers that we are concerned about, again 
relying on the notion that whatever they do they are going to do all by 
themselves without any help from the outside.
  In other words, third, that no country will sell ICBMs to a country 
of concern.
  Fourth, that no countries, other than the declared nuclear powers 
with the requisite technical ability or economic resources, will 
develop ICBMs from a space launch vehicle.
  In other words, they are not going to use the rockets that are used 
to launch satellites for military purposes to convert those missiles or 
rockets for military purposes.
  Another assumption: A flight test program of 5 years is essential to 
the development of an ICBM.
  Of course, when the United States and the old Soviet Union did 
research on a new missile, it would take 5 years for us to test it to 
make sure it worked properly, because it was always a new concept.

[[Page S9523]]

  So the CIA assumed in this NIE that it would take 5 years to develop 
a new missile.
  Seventh, that development of short- and medium-range missiles will 
not enable countries to significantly accelerate ICBM development.
  In other words, when they develop a shorter-range missile, that will 
have nothing whatsoever to do with their capability to develop more 
robust systems.
  Finally, the possibility of an unauthorized or accidental launch from 
existing nuclear arsenals has not changed significantly over the last 
decade.
  In my view, and in the view of many, these underlying assumptions 
ignored plain facts: Foreign assistance is increasingly commonplace and 
will accelerate indigenous missile programs. Other countries have sold, 
and almost certainly will continue to sell, weapons of mass destruction 
with ballistic missile components. The MTCR, which is the regime that 
is supposed to prevent this proliferation of weapons, has already been 
violated and is no doubt going to be violated again. And, finally, a 
flight test program does not have to follow the model of the United 
States or Soviet flight test program.
  So the conclusion that flowed from the faulty assumptions of the CIA 
National Intelligence Estimate had the effect of allowing unwarranted 
political conclusions to be reached and preached.
  Let me reiterate that.
  Because of the CIA's letter to Senators at the time that we were 
debating the national missile defense amendment, policy was affected. 
The President vetoed that bill based in part on the conclusions of the 
CIA's National Intelligence Estimate, which was based upon flawed 
assumptions, which turned out to be inaccurate.
  There were several reactions as a result of the President's action.
  The General Accounting Office and two former CDIs--Directors of 
Central Intelligence--Jim Woolsey and Bob Gates, each offered opinions 
about the NIE 95-19.
  The GAO prepared a report in September of 1996, and it concluded that 
the level of certainty regarding the 15-year threat which was stated in 
the NIE was, quoting, ``overstated.''
  Former Director of the CIA Jim Woolsey validated this GAO assessment 
during a September 24, 1996, Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
hearing. In his formal statement, Mr. Woolsey suggested the 1995 NIE 
asked the wrong question.
  He said the following:

       If you are assessing indigenous capabilities with the 
     currently-hostile countries to develop ICBMs of standard 
     design that can hit the lower 48 states, the NIE's answer 
     that we may have 15 years of comfort may well be a plausible 
     answer. But each of these qualifications is an important 
     caveat and severely restricts one's ability to generalize 
     legitimately, or to make national policy, based on such a 
     limited document.

  Among the things that former DCI Bob Gates said about the NIE was 
that it was ``politically naive.''
  Despite these concerns, the administration and opponents of missile 
defense were unwilling to hear views contrary to the conclusions of the 
NIE. Frankly, this is still the case. In May, when the Senate attempted 
to invoke cloture on the American Missile Protection Act, Senate bill 
1873, offered by Senators Cochran and Inouye, the administration based 
its opposition to the bill on that previous NIE, National Intelligence 
Estimate 95-19.
  Here is the quotation from the administration's opposition:

       The bill seeks to make it U.S. policy ``to deploy as soon 
     as technologically possible an effective National Missile 
     Defense system capable of defending the territory of the 
     United States against limited ballistic missile attack 
     (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate).''

  That is true.
  In her letter stating the administration's position in opposition to 
Senate bill 1873, the Defense Department's general counsel stated, and 
I quote:

       The Intelligence Community has concluded that a long-range 
     ballistic missile threat to the United States from a rogue 
     nation, other than perhaps North Korea, is unlikely to emerge 
     before 2010... Additionally, the Intelligence Community 
     concluded that the only rogue nation missile in development 
     that could strike the United States is the North Korean Taepo 
     Dong 2, which could strike portions of Alaska or the far-
     western Hawaiian Islands.

  That is the end of the quotation from the Department of Defense 
general counsel.
  So the administration was still basing its opposition to missile 
defense on this National Intelligence Estimate of 1995.
  In the wake of the debate over that poorly crafted report, Congress 
asked for a second opinion. It appointed a bipartisan commission of 
former senior government officials and members of academia led by 
former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, hence the name ``The Rumsfeld 
Commission Report.''
  This bipartisan Commission was asked to examine the current and 
potential missile threat to all 50 States and to assess the capability 
of the U.S. intelligence community to warn policymakers of changes in 
this threat.
  The Commission unanimously concluded three things: No. 1, the missile 
threat to the United States is real and growing; No. 2, the threat is 
greater than previously assessed; and, No. 3, we may have little or no 
warning of new threats.
  Let me go back and review each of those.

       1. The missile threat to the United States is real and 
     growing.
       ``Concerted efforts by a number of overtly or potential 
     hostile nations to acquire ballistic missiles with biological 
     or nuclear payloads pose a growing threat to the United 
     States, its deployed forces, its friends and allies. These 
     newer, developing threats in North Korea, Iran and Iraq are 
     in addition to those still posed by the existing missile 
     arsenals of Russia and China, nations with which we are not 
     now in conflict but which remain in uncertain transitions.''
       2. The threat is greater than previously assessed.
       ``The threat to the United States posed by these emerging 
     capabilities is broader, more mature and evolving more 
     rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by 
     the Intelligence Community,'' and a rogue nation could 
     acquire the capability to strike the United States with a 
     ballistic missile in as little as five years.
       3. We may have little or no warning of new threats.
       ``The Intelligence Community's ability to provide timely 
     and accurate assessments of ballistic missile threats to the 
     United States is eroding.''
       ``The warning times the United States can expect of new, 
     threatening ballistic missile deployments are being 
     reduced,'' and under some plausible scenarios, ``the United 
     States might well have little or no warning before 
     operational deployment [of a long-range missile.]''

  Now, Mr. President, why are the Rumsfeld Commission conclusions so 
different?
  First of all, the Commission answered a slightly different question 
than our intelligence agencies did in the 1995 NIE, by examining the 
missile threat to all 50 States. The intelligence community has 
acknowledged that Alaska and Hawaii could be threatened much sooner 
than 15 years from now, but for some reason did not include that in its 
1995 estimate.
  Second, the Commission has access to the entire amount of information 
in the intelligence community--frankly, a broader and more highly 
classified set of information than most of the analysts in the 
compartmentalized intelligence world. Obviously, much information is 
compartmentalized to prevent its unauthorized distribution and release, 
but that also inhibits to some extent the ability of analysts to 
appreciate all aspects of the potential threat.
  Third, the Rumsfeld Commission recognized that missile development 
programs in Third World countries no longer follow the patterns of 
United States and Soviet programs. They might, for example, succeed in 
testing a missile one time, conclude that they have got it right 
because, after all, they are using a weapon that has been sold to them 
essentially by another country and then deploy it based upon one test, 
whereas the United States and the Soviet Union, as I said before, might 
well have had to engage in years of testing to ensure that a new 
product would work.
  Fourth, the Commission also understood that foreign assistance and 
technology transfers are increasingly commonplace. Without getting into 
the classified information in the Rumsfeld report, it is very clear 
that countries with which we are concerned have acquired a great deal 
of technology and in some cases components and perhaps even whole 
missile systems from other countries eager to earn the cash from the 
sale of those components or that

[[Page S9524]]

equipment or technology. And so these nations did not have to do what 
the intelligence community thought they had to do, and that was to 
develop it indigenously, from the ground up, with only what the nation 
could produce. They have been very successful in acquiring technology 
from other countries which has naturally shortened the lead time for 
them to develop and deploy their own systems.
  Finally, and very importantly, the Rumsfeld Commission realized that 
foreign nations are aggressively pursuing denial and deception 
programs, thus reducing our insight into the status of their missile 
programs. In effect, what the Rumsfeld Commission concluded is this: 
That while the CIA in its estimate provided to us based its 
conclusions, in effect, on only what it could prove it knew, which, of 
course, is very little in the intelligence world, the Rumsfeld 
Commission examined what we knew and then asked questions about what 
the implications were about what we knew.
  Would it be possible, even though we have no evidence that a country 
has done certain things, that it could do so as a result of what we 
knew? And if our assumptions with respect to its intentions are 
correct, would it not be plausible to assume that they would try to do 
that; and if they tried to do it, might they succeed?
  So questions like that were asked in ways that were not based upon 
hard evidence in all cases but plausibilities and possibilities, and, 
as a result of asking those questions, some very troubling conclusions 
were reached which in many cases were verified by certain confirming 
evidence. And that is why we now understand that the nations with which 
we are most concerned have much more robust systems, both with respect 
to the missiles for delivery of weapons and the weapons on top of the 
missiles, than we had ever thought before.
  Second, these programs can be deployed with little or no warning. And 
third, and probably the key lesson to come out of this, we have to 
appreciate the fact that we will be surprised by surprises, but we 
should not be. We should not be surprised by surprises, because most of 
what these countries are doing we don't know, and we won't know until 
the weapon is used or it is finally tested and we realize that they 
have developed it or we find information in some other way that 
confirms a program that we previously did not know existed.
  So instead of being surprised at surprises, the Rumsfeld Commission 
report says we need to get into a new mode of thinking to understand 
that we should not be surprised by surprises, and that we should base 
our policy on that understanding.
  That is my concluding point, Mr. President. The Congress and the 
President, in setting national policy, in developing our missile 
defenses, in appropriating the funds to support those programs, should 
approach this with the understanding that we will have little or no 
advanced warning, that there is much that we don't know but that we are 
likely to be facing threats. Therefore, my conclusion is we have got to 
get on with the development of our missile defenses. That represents my 
three concluding points. No. 1, we have got to get on with the job of 
developing and deploying both theater missile defenses and a National 
Missile Defense System, and we can begin by voting for cloture and for 
the Cochran-Inouye bill when we return from the recess.
  Second, we must improve our intelligence capabilities and resources.
  And third, we must avoid arms control measures and diplomatic actions 
that impede our ability to defend ourselves and damage our intelligence 
sources and methods.
  We have a lot of work to do. Those of us on the Intelligence 
Committee have committed ourselves, based upon the briefing of the 
Rumsfeld report, to begin working on the intelligence aspects of this 
problem, and those who are on the Armed Services Committee and the 
Appropriations Committees will also have to work toward correction of 
the problems of the past to assure that our missile defense programs 
can proceed with the speed that is required to meet these emerging 
threats.
  I conclude by thanking the members of this bipartisan Rumsfeld 
Commission and suggest to all of my colleagues that they become 
familiar with the contents of its report because it should certainly 
guide us in our policy deliberations with respect to the security of 
the United States from a missile threat in future years.
  Mr. ENZI addressed the Chair.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.

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